A special ordered set (SOS) is an additional way to specify integrality conditions in a model. In particular, a special ordered set is a way to restrict the number of nonzero solution values among a specified set of variables in a model. There are various types of SOS:

The members of a special ordered set (SOS) individually may be continuous or discrete variables in any combination. However, even when all the members are themselves continuous, a model containing one or more special ordered sets (SOSs) becomes a discrete optimization problem requiring the mixed integer optimizer for its solution.

ILOG CPLEX uses special branching strategies to take advantage of SOSs. For many classes of problems, these branching strategies can significantly improve performance. These special branching strategies depend upon the order among the variables in the set. The order is specified by assigning weights to each variable. The order of the variables in the model (such as in the MPS or LP format data file, or the column index in a Callable Library application) is not used in SOS branching. If there is no ordered relationship among the variables (such that weights cannot be specified or would not be meaningful), other formulations should be used instead of a special ordered set.